Featured Filmmaker: Jerry Lewis

BIOGRAPHY:There are times when it's hard to tell the difference between the fact and the fiction in the life of Jerry Lewis.

One of the last living true icons of Hollywood's heyday, Lewis broke into the film scene with his partner, crooner Dean Martin, in the film version of the radio comedy My Friend Irma in 1949. The first of a multi-picture deal with producer Hal Wallis (Academy Award winner for Casablanca), Lewis' original screen test failed to impress Wallis. Since the deal was for both Martin and Lewis, Wallis had a special part written for Lewis that would showcase his manic comedic abilities. The film was a hit that spawned a sequel the following year, My Friend Irma Goes West.

The success of the Martin & Lewis team onscreen gave Jerry the opportunity to explore the medium with a documentary called How to Smuggle a Hernia Across the Border in 1949. This would begin a fascination with visual media that exists to this day.

When the team finally broke up in 1956 &#Array; a victim of their own success &#Array; Jerry Lewis really threw himself into all aspects the film medium. In 1960 Lewis wrote, directed and starred in The Bellboy, a film that was put together to fill a gap in the schedule. The big Jerry Lewis film slated for that year was supposed to be Cinderfella, a re-telling of the classic Cinderella story with a male lead that Lewis demanded be released during the Christmas holiday season. In order to have something on the screens featuring Lewis (who was a top box office draw at the time), the studio turned the comic loose with a limited budget.

Lewis turned in a small comic gem, playing the dual roles of himself and the titular character. The unexpected success of The Bellboy allowed Lewis to spend more time behind the camera but only if he was also the major name in front of it as well. Even Lewis' first foray into directing television drama on the popular medical drama Ben Casey featured an appearance in front of the camera.

Lewis' fascination with both film and television led him to create the first director's video assist system. Looked at as "Jerry's noisy toy" by the film technicians, it became an invaluable aid in the filmmaking process. In fact, Lewis had to defend his respect and dabbling in the television medium on a number of occasions, leading the star to once claim that he refused to refer to television as "TV" as it detracted from the widespread impact of the medium. He would eventually have his own variety series in the 1960s. In fact, he had two, both called The Jerry Lewis Show. The first, for the ABC television network, would only last a season. His second, for NBC, would last for a couple of years and featured a young singing group, the Osmond Brothers. That will either impress you or make you hate the man and his work even more.

As the nation entered the '70s, audiences weren't as interested in the type of wacky comedy that Lewis had trademarked on film. Lewis himself wanted to grow as an artist and thought this would be the perfect time to do so. The result was one of the best known unreleased films ever made, 1972's The Day the Clown Cried. Written, produced and directed by Lewis, the film featured the funnyman as a clown at the Auschwitz concentration camp. The mere concept was found to be so offensive by some Jewish groups that the film was never screened. It's interesting to note that over 20 years later, Roberto Bergnini won himself an Oscar for making a film based on virtually the same idea. Robin Williams would make a far less interesting version of it a year later. To date, The Day the Clown Cried has still never been screened.

Lewis would bounce between films and television in the '70s. Lewis would also teach some courses in film at the University of Southern California where taught future Hollywood filmmakers George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. Lewis didn't really get much critical notice until his appearance in Martin Scorsese's dark comedy, The King of Comedy in 1983. This revitalized Lewis' career. Outside of making his yearly appearance on the Muscular Dystrophy telethon, Lewis had pretty much fallen off the entertainment map (although his work for the MDA did get him a Nobel Prize nomination).

With the reviews from King of Comedy, Lewis found himself able to get the kinds of dramatic roles he'd been denied for years. One of the best examples of this was an extended run on the crime drama Wiseguy. Most recently, Lewis has been scaling back his work to focus on health problems but still manages to host the entirety of the MDA telethon every Labor Day.

MUST-SEE FILM:

The Nutty Professor (1963): Forget that awful Eddie Murphy remake and its sequel, the original is much funnier and also much darker. Lewis doesn't have to rely on makeup effects to make the change from Julius Kelp to Buddy Love. While Murphy tried to show some of the darkness of the Buddy Love persona, Lewis hit the nail on the head, almost conjuring up a dark version of his old partner, Dean Martin. There's a reason this film keeps getting remade, it's just plain good.

Other work that deserves to be seen are Lewis' appearance in The King of Comedy and all of his work in the television series Wiseguy.

MISFIRE:While most people would probably pick The Day the Clown Cried sight unseen, I'd have to see it with my own eyes before condemning it the way others have. I'm afraid this has to go to a film that he only starred in, the adaptation of the Kurt Vonnegut novel Slapstick. This film is so transcendentally bad that it's a wonder all prints haven't been gathered up and turned back into nitrate.

POP-CULTURE:Lewis' oldest son, Gary Lewis, had a number of pop music hits in the '60s with his group, Gary Lewis and the Playboys.

Tried unsuccessfully for years to produce a feature film version of J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye but could never work out a deal with Salinger.